


this is it, that's the end of the joke

by lamphouse



Series: chronicle of the world we share [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1980s, Because underneath it all Crowley was an optimist, Canon Era, F/F, Genderswap, Musical References, mild anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-06-27 05:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19784530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: Entering the fourth hour of the Antichrist's residence on Earth, Crowley nearly makes it back into London before the panic starts to really set in (emphasis on the nearly).





	this is it, that's the end of the joke

**Author's Note:**

> friendly reminder this is strictly based on the novel

There were twenty minutes still to London, driving at the humanly pace Crowley finds herself at tonight. Twenty more minutes of warm August air skating past the closed windows of the Bentley and stifling silence from the backseat.

The backseat. It's quiet now, but Crowley can't stop the ringing in her ears, the echo of the supernatural whine of the... that _baby_.

(Crowley remembers the first baby. Conceived in the Garden and born outside of it, this disgusting, screaming mess that was _not_ a beautiful miracle of life or whatever Aziraphale kept trying to tell her it was but was still fascinating: the first thing made by someone other than God. The first wholly human creation.)

Anyway, it's twenty minutes at a snail's pace, but she can't help that. She feels like she's grasping at straws in the hopes that someone else's semblance of normal might still exist. Aziraphale is probably in the back room right now, trying to decide whether it's worth it to make tea first or give up and start with the wine. She'll settle on the later; the panic in Crowley's voice over the phone was probably audible from space. The panic in her voice after she ran out of that hospital, after...

Crowley blindly hits the dial, slamming on the radio and hoping beyond hope that it won't be either a) an agent of Hell or b) yet more Queen. It's neither, and she mumbles along wordlessly, watching lights crowd her field of vision the closer she gets to the city. Three thirty in the morning and London is still full of life. Crowley ignores the taste in her mouth at the phrase and turns up the radio further.

_She turns herself round and she smiles and she says..._

"This is it, that's the end of the joke," Crowley finishes tonelessly under her breath.

The car in front of her goes to exit and she miracles a hole in the spare tire in its trunk, just to make herself feel a little better. It'll turn a bad day into a worse one, pushing the driver that much closer to the edge—maybe they'll snap at a loved one or run a red light in return, a pinball clanging through the city slamming door after door in face after face—and the thought of that future infectious irritation makes Crowley smile until she realizes it might not happen. That is, if it doesn't happen soon, it might not at all. Because the world has an expiration date now, and it might all be for nothing, and her mood sinks again like a body bag tossed in a river.

The end of the world. There are a certain number of days left, a certain number of lunches and sunsets and nights spent curled up with the line of Aziraphale's leg along her back and the angel's hand in her hair. There are only so many loaves of rye bread left to be baked, so many rumors to start and bad action movies to fund. How long do ducks live? Are the last ducks already alive?

Wheels within wheels set in motion, some of them by her, but by the time the powers that be threw her into the mix, who's to say there was anything she could have done? She could have taken care of it, she'd left it somewhere or taken it home or whatever, but—

(That she even thought of taking care of a human (okay, human-ish, human _enough_ ) being alone should be enough to trigger the end of the world; despite being a major cause of the existence of motherhood, the idea of Crowley as a mother is more spine-chilling than anything Hell could come up with.

She thought about it, though. She thought about leaving the basket in the nearest pond in some reverse Moses situation, flinging it into the night and taking Aziraphale to Australia or somewhere where no one could find them, and then she thought about leaving the basket in her backseat and...)

Crowley stops the thought there, because again, portents. She congratulates herself on her discipline and flexes her hands on the steering wheel. Don't think about it. It's as simple as that. She is a professional, looking very composed in her leather jacket and pristine shirt and tie, altogether the cool rebel image that she projects with every atom of her being. (God, she'd really been killing it lately too. It's a goddamn tragedy, quite literally.) She's absolutely fine, and in a few minutes she'll be drinking whiskey from the nearest bottle, draped over Aziraphale's couch and decidedly not thinking about what's happening.

What's happening: the end of the world, beginning tonight. The end of the world begins tonight, in the form of a baby, on an airbase, in an idyllic countryside. An innocuous enough start when viewed from the outside, but then again, Satan himself was once beloved among angels, so you could never really tell with these things, could you?

What would happen with an Antichrist on Earth? Bred of angel stock, presumably, though who knows what its mother was. At least part genetically angel, supposedly delivered somewhere by demons (she takes a moment to imagine Ligur as a midwife, knowing to find the comedic where she can), maybe anti-blessed by some fairy godmothers with hellish powers, but then just...

Dropped on Earth. Left alone, unattended in a human family. Obviously the Dark Council thought that would be enough (probably had a whole subcommittee on child-rearing), but... Well, isn't that what happened to Crowley? Angel stock, taken in by Hell, and sent to live among humanity—and how had she turned out? Would Crowley let the world end? Would she give all this up?

Spend long enough in a form and it starts to seem like you were never outside it at all; that how you appear _is_ how you are. No matter how much it might ostensibly be merely the vessel in which she does her work, it's the vessel in which she lives day after day, and Crowley has spent six thousand years worth of those days in human forms, never outside one for a second longer than necessary. She has reflexes, at this point, though she's usually aware enough that if they become inconvenient she can shut them down. She breathes, she eats. She has great eyesight and a decent sense of smell. She gets allergies sometimes (though she wills them away) and sometimes she hyperventilates, like now, it seems.

And oh, her hands are shaking. Who let that happen?

The Bentley stops at an opportune traffic light, and the fact that Crowley hadn't already willed it away surprises her back into breathing regularly. She's off her game. Cracking open the window, she tries to suck down the cooling night air, but it's not, apparently—cooling, that is. Or maybe it is and she's just imagining things. Maybe it's just the metaphorical heat of Hell bearing down on her that leaves even the conditioned air in the Bentley unable to stop sweat collecting under her collar, rather than any literal hellfire.

But if even her body acts human, what of her mind? And how long did it take her to get there?

The phone at her elbow rings and Crowley picks it up mechanically, for once not caring who's on the other end.

"Crowley?"

"Present."

"Crowley!" Aziraphale's voice is jarringly bright—for the time of night, for the circumstance, for whatever's happening in Crowley's head right now. "You have so many lines, I can never keep them straight."

"Yeah," Crowley mumbles again.

She can hear Aziraphale's long frown through the phone. "Is that all? No 'angel, you've never once been straight in your entire existence'? My dear, are you alright?"

The light still hasn't changed. (A distant part of Crowley's mind wonders if that's her own doing, or Someone else's, but that part is too far off to hear clearly.)

"You're the one always telling me to focus on the road," she says, coming back to herself. "I'm at a traffic light now but really, calling me when you know I'm driving, that's reckless endangerment, angel."

"Well, that's what I was wondering," Aziraphale says. "Were you still planning on stopping by? There's a manuscript I was considering starting tonight but I held off—you know how I get when I focus, and I didn't want to chance missing you."

"No, yes, I—" Crowley pushes her glasses up into her hair and rubs her eyes. "M'on my way."

Another audible frown. " _Are_ you alright? I know you said you were out of the city, but you always drive so quickly."

"Traffic," Crowley lies easily but unconvincingly.

"Right..."

She can feel the next round of interrogation beginning to take shape in Aziraphale's mouth, so she quickly says, "I'll be there in a minute, alright? Ciao," and hangs up.

The light still hasn't changed, but Crowley doesn't bother to fix it. Rather, she takes the time to think, really think, beyond the white noise of panic and the semi-frantic wonderings about free will and the like, down to the core of what she always has to return to.

Crowley hopes. She always hopes. Is that something human she's picked up as well? Or has she always been like this? Do angels and demons have faith in the universe like this, or is it just her?

Faith is probably the wrong word. It's not faith that she feels necessarily—not in any way commonly understood Above, Below, or even Between. Angels and demons don't do faith like that. Theirs is based on the question of whether God's Great Plan is well-intentioned and good rather than whether said Great Plan or God exist at all, leading to a different beast all together. Humans, on the other hand, are practically blind in comparison. Crowley's hope is neither, though. Compared to certainty that the Almighty is hanging around down the street, it seems like a pitiably unsure little thing, but it is not a human faith at all.

But Crowley believes in other things. She believes in the universe's tendency to keep her safe. She believes in the constant terrors and wonders of humanity. She believes in the necessity of questions and in weather reports. She believes in Aziraphale. Crowley is an optimist and yes, in a way, she has faith in other things than the Heaven that cast her out and the Hell that keeps her in.

So (after a cathartic half second to scream) Crowley turns to the things she believes in: the things that give her hope. The night is cool when she rolls down the window, with easterly clouds and their promised rain. Two people walk out of the corner store arguing, but still the one kisses the other on the cheek as they part ways. A stray cat avoids a slowing bus. Twelve blocks away, Aziraphale is trying to read a book, but her heart isn't in it, instead looking up periodically and making her glance at the door.

The light changes. It's going to be a long eleven years.

**Author's Note:**

> the self-restraint I had to exercise to stop myself making crowley quote _gender trouble_ was fucking herculean, so you're welcome. anyway, I've always been weirdly into this bit of the book—the timelapse before they get to the ducks, the twelve hours the antichrist is on earth before they actually come up with the godfathers plan—and sure I could philosophize more but just.... hell really thought they'd drop the kid off somewhere and come back in eleven years huh.... that was the extent of their plan...
> 
> also I kept laughing to myself every time I wrote abt how long it was taking to drive bc it's always so funny to me when british people talk about distance. like this trip would hypothetically take two hours, whereas if I drove for two hours I'd still be in the same fucking corn field. tiny island babies.
> 
> title from [the aforementioned psychedelic furs song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNp5cpHKdWk), which I was listening to while writing another fic in this series when that two second exchange you see here popped fully formed into my head.
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com)


End file.
